Program(s):
Through exploring the streets of Delhi and feeling the constant stares men and women on the streets, I cannot help but notice the implications of beauty standards in India and the trends in advertising and beauty marketing to Indian women. I have witnessed so many of the advertisements and media in India focusing on the white ideal, products that claim to “lighten” your skin, and the changing landscape of the beauty and health industry in India. For my research project, I will focus on the sociology of the beauty ideal in India, including its historical significance, its everyday internalizations, and its reflection of the larger gender, class, and racial issues in India.
To further narrow my project, I will investigate what constitutes a “beautiful” Indian woman and how she is represented in the media and in the minds of the women I interview. Through this representation of the ideal, I will explore how gender, race and class differences are reaffirmed and further segregated, how capitalism and globalization have reconstituted Indian beauty standards, and how these beauty ideals control women and disempower their positions in society. Further, I would also like to explore how women reconstitute these beauty ideals and internalize them into their identity, whether in an empowering or disempowering way.
In order to extend this project to the different aspects of our program, I will explore all of these topics through different means in the different spaces we travel to. In Delhi, I talked with many of the Delhi University student women about what it means to be a beautiful young woman in Delhi and through what means they used to look and feel beautiful in their own skin. I continue to be in contact with one of the students and will continue a dialogue with her about her identity and beauty ideals. Likewise, I will further research the historical connection with post colonialism, the caste system, and capitalism in regards to changing beauty ideals. In Chennai, I will interview students from the University of Madras about their perceptions of beauty standards in south India and how beauty interacts with religion and youth culture. Additionally, I will explore how beauty standards interact with industry and capitalism since Chennai is such an industrial hub. As the Chennai portion of our program continues, I will also attempt to gain an Indian academic perspective through interviewing one or more of the guest speakers. In Varanasi, my research will explore the differences in beauty ideals and internalizations in a very religious city verses an industrial one. I will explore how beauty ideals interact with piety and become reconstituted for religious purposes.
List of Activities:
September 17th: Walked around Khan Market to observe how a more expensive part of town portrays beauty pictures and ideals.
September 21: Walked around Old Delhi to observe the beauty portrayals there and contrast how they compare with Khan Market.
September 27th: Email interview of a Delhi University student about her experiences of being a woman and the pressures of being beautiful. She addressed questions about the kinds of beauty expectation that are currently present, how most youth women are exposed to such standards, what expectations she places on herself, and how women and men treat other women regarding beauty.
September 28th: Walked around select city walk mall to observe and take pictures of the capitalist beauty ads that fuel these beauty standards in Delhi.
October 5th: Interviewed a woman in her 20s from Chennai about her experiences of the pressures that beauty places on young girls growing up in India, how parents reinforce these pressures, and how she now navigates the beauty ideals present in Chennai.
October 8th: Visited some of the beauty stores around the ECR and analyzed what kinds of messages about beauty were present and how they advertized their products.
October 17th: Visited the all women's gym below our guest house and observed the kinds of messages about health and beauty that they promote. I also observed what kinds of women worked out there and how they interacted with each other and the space. I continued to do visit this gym for the rest of the time in Chennai.
October 23rd: I interviewed the journalist Kavitha today. We discussed how the media and news contribute to the ideology of beauty in Chennai and how this ideology promotes the traditional roles of women as wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. We also discussed the commodification of the woman's body in the media and how beauty ideals are used to control women